NEET Youth: The Blind Spots of the Demographic Dividend

Behind the tables published each year by the High Commission for Planning lie interrupted life paths. Young women forced to leave school too early due to a lack of boarding facilities or transportation. Graduates aged 27 still waiting for their first job. Rural teenagers whose future was decided the very moment they dropped out of school.
This is the reality captured by the NEET indicator — Neither in Employment, Education or Training. Not in work, not in education, not in training. A technical acronym used to describe what has now become a structural form of exclusion.
In 2023, Morocco had 2.94 million young people aged 15 to 29 in this situation, representing 33.6% of that age group. In other words, more than one in three young people aged 15–29 is affected. The rate had already reached 35% in 2017 and still stood at 33% in 2022. The post-Covid recovery has done little to alter this trajectory.
This is no longer a cyclical phenomenon, but a lasting imbalance between the education system, labor market integration, and economic dynamics.
Among 15–24-year-olds, the NEET rate stands at 25.6%. It rises to 50.2% for those aged 25–29. In other words, one out of two young adults finds themselves outside any integration mechanism. This shift occurs at the point of leaving the education system, often without a bridge to employment. In the absence of effective pathways, waiting periods lengthen, skills depreciate, and distance from the labor market tends to become entrenched.
The overall figure masks a major asymmetry. In 2023, the NEET rate reached 49.2% among women, compared to 18.5% among men. The risk is thus nearly three times higher for young women. In most cases, these situations do not fall under unemployment in the strict sense. They correspond to a complete withdrawal from the labor market, linked to marriage, motherhood, or domestic constraints. The NEET issue is therefore inseparable from that of female economic participation.
The NEET rate stands at 35.4% in rural areas compared to 32.6% in urban areas. The gap may appear limited, yet it reflects deep disparities in access to educational infrastructure, training, and employment opportunities. At the regional level, differences reach nearly twelve percentage points. It is no longer the same youth, nor the same prospects, depending on the territory.o
Khadija MASMOUDI